After nationalisation (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

A short time ago, when the Tories decided to kick out Lord Hall, Labour’s appointed Chairman of the Post Office, there was a series of strikes and demonstrations by Postal workers. The Press of course glorified in presenting this as issued by the telephone engineers ‘explained’, "We are not loyalty, even if mis-placed, to their boss, but as a leaflet a Lord Hall Fan Club . . ." They were really worried that this move pushed through by Chataway was indicative of other changes in the Post Office that they felt might threaten Union organisation and employment prospects.

Presumably in an effort to gain public support for their action the same leaflet was prominently headed “Hands Off. . . . Britain’s telephones belong to you’’, referring to the Tory plans to de-nationalise certain profitable sectors of State industry. The idea that industry should be run for the benefit of the community, instead of a small group of investors, is some advance in political thinking, but its attempted expression in support for nationalisation is in fact self-defeating, since none of the fundamental relationships in private industry are changed by nationalisation and all the old problems remain. One of the reasons some workers support nationalisation is that they falsely identify the capitalist state with the interests of the community as a whole. Their nationalisation is still stronger than class consciousness. The break-up of existing nationalised industries, would not be an advance, and might cause some dislocation and redundancy which justify the workers involved opposing such measures without their deceiving themselves as to the real nature of the organisation and ownership of the nationalised industries.

Failure of nationalisation (whether partial as in this country, or almost total as in Russia) to prevent competition, insecurity, destitution and other ills affecting workers has made some of its one-time advocates disillusioned and apathetic whilst others have searched for explanations and new formulas to apply. Emerging from this has been a renewed and extended interest in ‘Workers’ Control' and ‘Workers’ Self-Management'. This is against the grain of both national Bolshevik and Social-Democrat organisation and politics but it is still not a solution, it too will fail to deliver the expected results.

It is essential for socialists to show how these developments point to the practicability and need for Socialism. It would be irresponsible, however, to advocate either nationalisation or workers’ control in the name of “developing consciousness through struggle” as so many self-proclaimed revolutionaries do. To associate with the particular reforms demanded is to be associated with their failure. Since measures such as ‘nationalisation’ and ‘workers’ control,” although originally in the working class, are generally only enacted to the extent and in such a way that they benefit the capitalists, by supporting these measures socialists would be helping to delude our fellow workers into thinking that real gains had been made. When the coal mines were nationalised, the miners believed that a great victory had been won, the capitalist politicians thought otherwise. It took a lot of redundancies, wage reductions and strikes to convince the miners of the true position.

Democratic control over industry and society as a whole can only be achieved by the abolition of the capital-wage-labour relationship, by making all the world’s resources the common property of mankind. Anything short of this is at best a palliative, at worst a total failure even proving detrimental to workers’ interests.

Michael Bradley

Can you think? (1970)

From the January 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Inside capitalism lie the seeds of its own destruction — the working class, developing the consciousness which one day it will use to win political control, and large-scale highly productive industry and intensive agriculture, capable of providing for the needs of all mankind without distinction of race or sex. Because world capitalism is not ruled by a homogeneous, unified class but by many sectional interests forced into competition, these individual capitalists and individual states are compelled inescapably and sometimes reluctantly to develop the old, and introduce new, productive techniques (but also to inhibit their use by trying to ensure that only that which can be sold at a profit is produced) and to educate the working class to a correspondingly high technological level (but also to try to prevent it coming into contact with truly scientific ideas about the society which it now organises and maintains without the help of these parasitical owners).

Ideas such as: man has no instincts, either noble or savage. All his social behaviour is learned and socially conditioned.

The working class own almost nothing except their physical and mental energies. Certainly they have no country and so patriots (except the dead ones) suffer from delusions.

No god has ever been proved to have intervened in the affairs of man — but make-believe gods have been invoked to keep the serf at his plough, the king on his throne, the Ulster Unionist Party in office and the pope in his luxury palace.

Members of all ethnic groups — be they black, red, yellow, white or brown — have potentially the same intelligence. That these potentials are not realised is due to historical circumstances and environmental factors and not to biological differences.

Neither Russia nor any of its satellites, allies or former ‘fraternal states’ is controlled by the working class. Capitalists rule there and exploit wage slaves. Wherever wages are paid in exchange for labour-power a profit is being made, or the deal would not take place.

So-called overpopulation is only a problem because the prevailing social system cannot afford to feed the hungry.

For example, the Indian sub-continent, highly fertile in most parts as it is, with contemporary methods of agriculture could provide food enough to feed the whole world, not just Indians.

The race for the moon, like all other military-political-strategic ventures would be a long way from the top of the list of priorities in a sane and rational socialist world without money, prices and profits, where all goods would be free and all work would be entirely voluntary, where human beings would not be capital investments being kept as oiled and efficient soft machines by their weekly wage packets, but would be priceless co-participants in the conquest of human needs through the democratically controlled harnessing of science, industry and agriculture, the motive being freedom from want, freedom and time to pursue pleasing and satisfying activities instead of the monotonous and physically destroying enslavement to the hard machine in the service of their master—profit.

A hallucination? A dream world divorced from the objective realities? Do you still succumb to the human nature/original sin myth that is central to the apologetic ideology of capitalism, which justifies coercion, oppression, repression, moral codes (‘Thou Shalt Not’), exploitation, war, periodic crises, poverty and the existence of a class which produces nothing but consumes the best? Or do you still subscribe to the even hoarier view that resources are scarce and always will be scarce because they always have been scarce? How long is it since you took your head out of the sand and had a breather? The atmosphere will very soon be thick with socialist ideas. Not solely because of the efforts of our Party’s small membership but because others besides us are rational people faced with the general problems of the working class. If we have come to these conclusions from examining the world in which we live and the agents of change contained within it, then so can they. So can you.

Ideas spring out of the economic structure of society. They spell out Socialism a mile high. Freedom and plenty will not be the result of heaven-sent providence but of human effort, as everything in history has been. 

Michael Bradley

The Wages System Must Go (1969)

From the December 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people nowadays have some grievance with this or that aspect of society. Millions suffer the horrors of capitalist wars in Vietnam and Biafra. Mental illness is a growing problem. Old-age pensioners are dying from malnutrition, from cold. Slum violence and riots hit the headlines. Waiting lists for hospital beds and houses outstrip supply. Town planning is without reference to the individual: he has no control over his environment. Every day more strikes, more redundancies, and so on.

Most people would agree that each of these grievances could be remedied with a fair measure of goodwill and intelligence.

Socialists would disagree. They are all inherent in the way this society is organised. Their solution lies in abolishing capitalism, which embraces the entire world and whose motive is not the satisfaction of human needs or the alleviation of human suffering, but the creation of profit for disposal by the privileged few, and the accumulation of capital.

What, then, constitutes capitalism? Capitalism is the society in which a certain group of people, a small minority, monopolise the ownership of the factories, land, mines, transport concerns, and every other point where wealth is produced. In this country they are proud to be called the capitalist class. This appellation is a hallmark of respectability, of privilege, and of alleged superiority. In Russia, China, and Eastern Europe they are proud to be called people’s commissars and members of praesidiums and politburos.

But mere monopoly of these means of production is not enough to give them a privileged position in society. They must employ workers, people who will produce all society’s wealth but never own more than that which their wage represents. Some say that the workers get a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, but what is ‘fair’? If the working class produce everything then they should receive all of it. But do they? No. The fact is that the worker’s wage represents only a fraction of the wealth he has created. He is robbed—but legally. And although he constantly struggles to improve his wage, he apparently never dreams of abolishing the entire wages system.

Some radicals think that this is unnecessary. After all, they argue, if you seize all the means of production from the capitalists and institute state ownership, then only the state (and through the state, the people as a whole) will benefit from the wages system.

And if the state machine is managed by people who call themselves Marxists or Socialists or Communists or the National Liberation front, then this is obviously a more just and sane society. A society where people can at last plan their environments; with human priorities to the fore, and unrestricted by the demands of the market economy. But is it?

Will these advocates of state ownership have eliminated the contradictions of capitalism, manifested in a class struggle between the capitalist who strives to intensify exploitation through lower wages, longer hours, and faster production, and the wage slave, whose aim is to raise his wage, slow down production, and lessen his working hours? And forced into competition with other states and their ruling-classes, will housing have priority over defence or more profitable industries like motor cars and cosmetics?

The rulers of Russia, China, Cuba, North Vietnam, and other self-proclaimed ‘socialist’ countries perform the same function as that of the capitalist described above. They must pump surplus value out of the working class or be destroyed in the international competitive process.

Periodically they urge their workers to fight wars for them, sometimes for ‘defence’ (of their capitalist private property), sometimes for blatantly imperialist aims. They crush strikes of dissatisfied workers, ruthlessly, with all the state power at their disposal.

Their workers are exploited and oppressed just as surely as we are. Perhaps more so, for in those so-called ‘workers’ states’, the workers are prohibited from forming their own independent trade unions.

To summarise, capitalism means class monopoly of the means of production—its prime motive is profit, and to hell with the interests of the worker. Its mechanism, the means by which it robs, is the wages system. Solutions to capitalism’s problems can be found only after abolishing this system.

All other solutions, such as the ‘welfare’ state, housing squats, treaties to abolish or localise wars, non-aggression pacts, backing Britain, Labour or ‘communist’ governments or ‘workers’ control’ (of the wages system) are at best palliatives, at worst outright deceit.

And our solution? Don’t follow anyone, don’t believe anyone who offers you paradise—and a wage. And don’t expect us to lead you. We are allergic to sheep. Instead, cultivate your self-reliance and organise yourselves democratically (and that means equal participation in decision- and policy-making, with all tasks not assumed by leaders but delegates) for the conquest of political power. When you have political power as a class, you will be the last class in history to be emancipated. There are none below you, none you will need to dominate to maintain your position as free men and women at last.

Voluntary co-operation on a world scale will replace compulsory economic competition between individuals. Social antagonisms will fade into history. With the abolition of the wages system the interests of the individual will coincide with those of society. Genuine freedom will have dawned.

M. A. B.

Background to Apartheid (1968)

From the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The system of Apartheid thought out and applied by the National Party regime in South Africa is a consciously racist one. There is a long history of repressive and discriminatory legislation aimed against the ‘‘non-white’’, and in particular the African population. The National Party under its leaders Hertzog, Malan, Strijdom and Verwoerd reduced the limited representation of the none-white population until today it is non-existent.

In an effort to stem the rising nationalist fervour among Africans and prevent the consolidation of opposition forces, as represented by the African and Indian National Congresses, and elements of the "Communist" and Liberal Parties, the government has extended the normal ruling class policy of divide and rule to include actual geographical separation. There have thus been created so-called “Bantustans” which, as a scheme on paper, has been so often used by the hypocritical supporters of Apartheid as a conscience absolver. In fact the “Bantustans” or “Black Homelands” amount to nothing more than a large number of scattered reserves covering about one seventh of South Africa’s territory, much of it of the poorest quality. Claims by the National Party as to the self-governing nature of the reserves are quite false.

The self-set task of the government has been not so much the preservation of the traditional African tribal system as its re-creation. Much of the tribal system was destroyed long ago by military defeat in a series of wars waged against conquest, as well as by the widespread adoption of Christianity. If the government had directed all the resources of the state into a genuine attempt to build up the remnants of the tribal society, it may have halted the clock for a while, but it could not have turned it back. As it was they were unwilling to lose the economic advantage of African farm and factory workers, not to mention personal lackeys. The result has only been to continue and sharpen the internal strife, with the government becoming more desperate and openly repressive in their attempts to safeguard the dominance of the Afrikaner farmer class.

Inevitably the already restricted freedom of speech and press has been removed in an effort to bolster the apartheid regime. Both the African and Indian National Congress that had been so successful in breaking down political apathy among farmers and workers are now banned. One of the most far reaching attacks on democracy made by the government has been the Suppression of Communism Act. The wide definition given to ‘communism’ and the absolute authority given to the Minister has meant its use against any and all opponents of the regime. Govan Mbeki, the author of The Peasants Revolt was detained in solitary confinement for two months under this law before being acquitted of the charge against him. He was only one of many African political organisers to be subjected to this same sort of treatment. Radio and the press are also subject to censorship and the introduction of television is actively resisted by the S. African state.

In the field of education the non-white population is at a serious disadvantage both through the type and amount available, though education for white workers is warped in many spheres, in particular that of race. A large number of distortions appear in the history textbooks provided for both white and non-white pupils. Two myths in particular are widely believed, namely that the Dutch landed in an empty territory, and that clashes with African tribes were always violent, with massacres of innocent unsuspecting whites by the Africans. This is in complete contradiction to the accounts of many early travellers. The addition of “race studies” to many school curricula has been fraught with danger from the very beginning, though perhaps more for what it left out, than for what it included. There is for instance a high percentage of space devoted to “Bantu tribal life in the reserves” but very little to “Bantu in Urban Areas” which has resulted in the whole picture becoming distorted, and most white children left utterly ignorant of the industrial shanties and slums, and the general frustrations suffered by non-white workers.

The policy of Apartheid has been, and continues to be, a definite hindrance to industrial expansion in South Africa. While it has provided a vast supply of cheap unskilled labour, it has ignored the pressures of world competition toward the need for increased technical skill and specialisation. The National Bureau for Educational and Social Research reported in 1962 a shortage of 12 per cent among junior scientists, and 10 per cent among professional engineers without taking account of posts filled by inadequately trained labour. In its annual Economic Review the South African Reserve Bank drew attention to “an insufficient supply of certain classes of skilled manpower. Such shortages were evident, for example, in the building, iron and steel, general engineering and motor industries”. The Minister of Education, forecast a shortage of 1,500 doctors in 1965, and this in a field which has been more open to Africans than other professions. Capitalist groans at this state of affairs have been echoed by the National Developments Foundation of South Africa, as the following speech by Dr. F. Meyer, its President demonstrates:

  Why cannot we increase productivity and bring down the cost of living? Why cannot we modernise our factories? Why cannot we improve or expand our marketing and selling? and hundreds of similar questions you may ask. The answers arc all the same, namely: because we do not have the trained managerial executive and technical manpower to plan, organize and administer these things. The opportunities are there. We can get the money, the materials and the equipment, but we cannot lay our hands on the trained manpower to turn ideas into action.

It may fairly be said that the capitalist class in South Africa are for the most part opposed to the strict apartheid measures that have been applied, even though their representation on the political field, through first the Unionist and later the United Party, has been one of compromise with the numerically predominant Afrikaner Nationalists currently entrenched in the seat of power The more radical Progressive Party and the now dissolved Liberal party forthrightly called for a multi-racial South Africa taking an attitude very similar to that put forward by W. H. Hutt in his The Economics of the Colour Bar published in 1964 — “When we buy a product in the free market we do not ask about the sex, race, nationality or political opinions of the producer. All we are interested in is whether it is good value for money”. 

In spite of the ideology of Apartheid and its associated practices, the complete separation of people into tribal and ethnic groupings has proved impossible. With such a closely integrated economic structure, and with all the important harbour facilities, the best arable land, and mineral wealth owned by “white" people, it could not have been otherwise. Hampered as they arc industrialisation and urbanisation continue. in many cases with restrictive employment laws being openly breached. Between 1962 and 1964 the African population of Johannesburg increased from 609,100 to 706,389. Increasing numbers are being recruited through the labour bureaux in the Transkei. The figures are endless, all of them testify to the impossibility of complete separation. They reveal the policy of apartheid as a scheme for the subjection of non-white farmers and workers in the interests of Afrikaner farmers.

That the capitalist class will gain political as well as economic control of South Africa is inevitable. The question remains—when and how. Should the National Party remain in power, unwilling to make any sort of compromise then violence will be the only alternative—a bloody revolt will commence, the result of stifled opinion and pent-up frustrations of years of racism.

Michael Bradley

Old Harmony (1968)

From the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The story of the Kibbutzim the golden egg of that peculiar version of Social Democracy in Israel, Mapam, (though all the major parties run a few settlements all on fairly exclusive lines, politically), seems only too reminiscent of the utopian ideals of early 19th Century Europe. Substitute the name Ber Borochov for Owen or Fourier and we get surprisingly near to the misguided adventurers of those days.

At a time when the rising European bourgeoisie was still battling to break its feudal fetters, and when the proletariat was still in its early formative years, it is understandable that here and there socialist ideals, lacking the materials basis for their implementation, should find expression in the attempted establishment of utopian communities. In the modern world however, where technology and the forces of production have been raised to an unprecedented level, the notion that isolated communities can be established unaffected by the anarchic and alienating conditions of capitalism is completely unrealistic.

The Kibbutz provides, it is true, a living example of the practicability of the socialist demand for a society in which each shall give according to his ability. The problem of the “lazyman” is almost non-existent, but this was true also of the communities established in America some 160 years ago. (Charles Nardoff in his Communistic Societies of United States wrote in 1874 that “the lazy men who are the budbears of speculative communists are not so far as I have heard to be found in the existing communes".) The experiment has been performed and in this direction proved successful, now is the time to progress. We must move away from this variation of the ‘opt out' illusion and consciously pursue the class struggle to a successful conclusion. This means building up international class solidarity without the provision of illusory escapes into the little world of the Kibbutz.

The fact is that the Kibbutzim, like its earlier models in the New World, have merely paved the way for class-divided capitalism. The pioneers regarded these communal farms as the pattern of a future nation, but those remaining have seen instead the growth of a way of life which is the very antithesis of what they stood for. In the United States those communities were invaluable in developing the previously uncultivated areas of the West, and in doing the hard and exhausting work necessary in the opening up of the country for others to exploit. They extended the boundaries of ‘civilisation' and vastly increased the value of surrounding land. Precisely the same purpose has been served by the Kibbutzim of Israel, though on a more planned and systematised basis. The settlement of the arid and desert zones, and the extension of effective Israeli state control has been their contribution to the increased dominance of capitalism in the Middle East.

In the 19th Century America dozens of these communities went painfully out of existence. Those which remained so changed in character that they were no longer recognisable as 'experiments in communism', they became experiments in capitalism. The freedom from any lord or master which, for instance, the Rappites so cherished did not it seems extend to the two hundred Chinese workers whom they exploited in their cutlery factory. Similarly the Perfectionists employed some three hundred persons in manufacture, and even went so far as to hire servants. They became just another employer of labour, industrial and agricultural corporations, despite some unusual characteristics. The kibbutz, by definition a small scale enterprise, cannot hope to be self-sufficient. It could never fulfil the fundamental requirement of a Socialist society that each should take according to his need, but even to maintain the modest standard of living which they now have they are required to sell their produce on the capitalist market in exchange for those necessaries they are unable to produce. To this end they have entered the field of light industry, producing plastics, crockery, furniture and a host of other goods. Here again, as with their American predecessors, they become hirers of labour. They face all the problems of capitalism in regard to price fluctuations, wages, strikes and, as a capitalist organisation, are not backward in their methods of dealing with them.

The old communities of the United States relied heavily for their continuation on attracting more immigrants and, to a lesser degree, on financial contributions from their country or origin (which in many cases was Germany).

Similarly the kibbutz relies for its survival to some extent on the increase of Jewish immigrants encouraged by such organisation as the Mapai-Habonim and the Mapam-Hashomer Hatzair (“the builders” and the “young guardian”), also to contributions from Zionist organisations, and to government and private capital aid. The idealistic kibbutzniks have of course been a very useful adjunct to the Israeli military forces. The Shakers young men joined in Civil war on the side of Unionists, but this was exceptional for such communities. In this respect the kibbutzim have not even reached their predecessors standard. But if and when their use in these respects diminishes the government’s benevolence and support will undoubtedly fail.

Persecution in Europe by state and established church authorities has more than once led to emigration and attempts at forming a new and saner society. Some of the qualities achieved may be applauded but it is an unfortunate fact that their desired aims have not been fulfilled. The limited success and abundant failures of the 19th century experiments and those in the 20th century should be a lesson to workers everywhere. The building up of a strong revolutionary Socialist movement on an international scale is the immediate task to be faced.

Michael Bradley

Keeping us down (1970)

Book Review from the October 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Irrational in Politics by Solidarity. 2s.

This short pamphlet largely consists of verbatim extracts from, and summaries of, the works of Engels, Freud, Reich, Michael Cattier and others, and it would be better to read their works yourself to draw your own conclusions. For those without the time or inclination to do this, however, the pamphlet is quite useful.

It sets out to give a partial explanation of why, given the availability of revolutionary propaganda and the logic of establishing Socialism, workers in general still reject, often violently, this alternative to the insoluble mess of capitalism. The smallness of revolutionary propaganda set against the capitalist monopoly of the mass media is accepted as a major factor in the conditioning of workers , but further reasons are sought to explain the contradiction between the self-evident economic logic of abolishing capitalism and the acceptance of this system by the mass of the people.

The crude outlook of many "left-wingers", who see a working class naturally revolutionary being thwarted by incompetent and bureaucratic leaders and the physical repression of the state machine, is from the start rejected:

It is obvious that if large sections of the population were constantly questioning the principles of hierarchy, the authoritarian organisation of production, the wages system, or other fundamental aspects of the social structure, no ruling class could maintain itself in power for long. For rulers to continue ruling it is necessary for those at the bottom of the social ladder not only to accept their condition but eventually to lose even the sense of being exploited. Once this psychological process has been achieved the division of society becomes legitimised in people's minds. The exploited cease to perceive it as something imposed on them from without . . . Only at times of occasional insurrectionary outbursts do the rulers have to resort to force, as a kind of reinforcement of a conditioning stimulus.

According to Solidarity it was left to Wilhelm Reich to explain " . . . the lag between class consciousness and economic reality, and the tremendous social inertia represented by habits of deference and submission among the oppressed". The explanation lay in the sexual repression of people and in the whole authoritarian upbringing of children associated in particular with the patriarchal family. Reich expressed it this way:

As the economic basis (of the family) became less significant, its place was taken by the political function which the family now began to assume. Its cardinal function, that for which it is mostly supported by conservative science and law, is that of serving as a factory for authoritarian ideologies and conservative structures.

From this examination of family relationships Reich concludes pessimistically that revolutionary propaganda seeking to explain the social injustice and irrationality of the economic system falls on deaf ears, because if people realised they were wasting their lives in the service of an absurd system they would either go mad or commit suicide:

To avoid achieving such anxiety-laden insight they justify their existence by rationalising it. They repress anything that might disturb them and acquire a character structure adapted to the conditions under which they live.

The writer of the pamphlet is aware of the inadequate nature of this conclusion since it implies totally malleable individuals in whom total sexual repression has produced total conditioning. It does not allow for the possibility (dictated by man's sexual needs themselves)  that a fight against sexual repression may well loosen this "character-structure". We might say furthermore that the choice depicted by Reich between madness and submission to capitalism's authority would only be real to the extent that the individuals who have begun to break loose remained isolated. The socialist organisation would enable a group-identity to be formed as a force against this. There are now also healthy signs that young people in struggling to achieve free-sex life are denting the repressive ideology of capitalism. The pamphlet outlines two main reactions to this movement. One is open, outward opposition, the other is an attempt at absorption and control through commercialising sexuality. Solidarity correctly describe the process whereby this is done but appear to attribute to it the status of a conscious capitalist policy which it definitely is not. Making profits from "consumer sex"  is not done for ideological reasons.

The last part of the pamphlet is an attack on the inner conservatism of Bolshevik ideology in relation to sex and family relationships. Unfortunately Solidarity are still handicapped in their examination of this subject by their acceptance of the myth that the 1917 Russian revolution was socialist. The material provided can nevertheless be used to the greater advantage by others.

Michael Bradley

Middle Class Radicals (1968)

Book Review from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Middle Class Radicalism. By F. Parkin, Manchester University Press.

This book is a study of the social bases of support for a political mass movement —CND. It is not CND itself which is of primary interest to the author so much as certain sociological issues which his study might help to illuminate.

Parkin makes the usual assumption made by most sociologists and advertising men when he labels a certain section of society as 'middle class' rather than seeing that most members of this category although having certain common characteristics are also members of the working class.

Only if sociological techniques are set firmly within a historical frame—and a Marxist conception of the historical process at that—can they be used to full effect. Indeed the inadequate definition of class and of some of the problems posed derives from the a-historical approach of this type of enquiry. The author, in some measure is aware of this, and in an excellent chapter he provides a commentary on the battles that took place within the Labour movement and CND over unilateralism and the way in which this related to the leadership struggle going on in the Labour Party. The tactical shifts for personal and factional advantage, regardless of previous declamations are tersely documented. A veritable little museum of turncoat butterflies, neatly transfixed for Socialists to display as a warning to the inexperienced new voters who could be deceived by the Labour Party's more subtle election ploys now promised.

The book is based upon answers received from questionnaires circulated to CND supporters in 1965 and 1966. Even bearing in mind the specific purposes of the study, anyone remotely concerned knows that 'CND 1958' was definitely not 'CND 1965.' It is true that its social roots might not have changed drastically but the effect of this time-lag should always be kept in mind.

Part of the study assesses the activities of CND supporters in terms of the sociological concepts of 'expressive—instrumentalist' action. 'Expressive' action being that which obtains '. . . satisfactions derived from expressing personal values . . . unrelated to class or material interests . . .' 'Instrumentalist' actions are those '. . . geared to the attainment of specific and concrete goals.'

Although Parkin is careful not to ignore the instrumentalist aspect of CND activity he tends to overemphasise its expressive role generally and that which it played as the symbolic rallying point for a variety of 'anti-Establishment' positions. This derives, perhaps, from the fact that he is dealing with 1965 not 1958. It should be remembered that one of the techniques employed by ruling groups when policy is being subjected to radical criticism, is to convey the impression via comment in the mass media that their critics are 'honest well-intentioned, chaps, you know, but who are highly emotional and don't really have a grasp of the facts.' Thus while it is true that most CNDers had little grasp of the political or even military realities, an attempt was made to discount their generally accurate knowledge of weapons and radiation which was the factual basis from which the movement grew. Most commentators have fallen for this line of seeing the protesters as primarily highly emotional and —in the jargon, as 'expressive' in their actions. Is this not to mistake ruling class propaganda for fact? Most opponents of nuclear weapons in 1957-8 seem to have been people combining knowledge of atomic and nuclear weaponry and its past and present effects, a simple 'instrumentalist' anti-test, anti-bomb policy, intense moral indignation and an a-political, anti-political naivety which was swiftly and effectively manipulated by astute pro-Labour elements who saw their opportunity to organise and control the growing dissent as a powerful weapon in the coming election battle in 1959. This was 'instrumentalism' indeed!

The cynical Labourites who captured and corrupted the idealism of 1958 are responsible in no small measure for setting in motion the growing anti-parliamentary feeling which exists today. Despair and disillusion arising from the unprincipled actions of nominally 'anti-nuclear' Labourites helped to strengthen the call for direct action and the attack on the democratic process. At the time we warned of the dangerous path to which direct action could lead a radical movement, and now, when the call for violent direct action has grown, the danger to democracy from the 'right' and the 'left' has become clearer for all to see.

The author in a chapter on education, occupation and radicalism brings out a connection between high formal education and radical views which in a period of student unrest (notwithstanding the many other factors operating) is of general interest. He refines the term 'middle class' and locates the main support for CND as coming from the 'educated middle class' offering an explanation for this.

One final thought for Parkin: what are the implications for social theory if it turns out that the 'educated middle class' is primarily a section of the working class? It is about time that the un-Marxist identification of the 'working class' with the manual and industrial workers made by Trotskyists and nearly everyone else was abandoned.

B.